exp: update man page and HOWTO

[fio.git] / fio.1

diff --git a/fio.1 b/fio.1
index 5291126401a34fdd836137cc9694dc7b5574255d..b4dec91543611adaf6c0cf7b229468d89c8fbcec 100644 (file)
--- a/fio.1
+++ b/fio.1
@@ -115,7 +115,29 @@ and there may be any number of global sections.  Specific job definitions
 may override any parameter set in global sections.
 .SH "JOB PARAMETERS"
 .SS Types
-Some parameters may take arguments of a specific type.  The types used are:
+Some parameters may take arguments of a specific type.
+Anywhere a numeric value is required, an arithmetic expression may be used,
+provided it is surrounded by parentheses. Supported operators are:
+.RS
+.RS
+.TP
+.B addition (+)
+.TP
+.B subtraction (-)
+.TP
+.B multiplication (*)
+.TP
+.B division (/)
+.TP
+.B modulus (%)
+.TP
+.B exponentiation (^)
+.RE
+.RE
+.P
+For time values in expressions, units are microseconds by default. This is
+different than for time values not in expressions (not enclosed in
+parentheses). The types used are:
 .TP
 .I str
 String: a sequence of alphanumeric characters.
@@ -478,7 +500,15 @@ size, fio can alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO buffer.
 If set, fio will fill the IO buffers with this pattern. If not set, the contents
 of IO buffers is defined by the other options related to buffer contents. The
 setting can be any pattern of bytes, and can be prefixed with 0x for hex
-values.
+values. It may also be a string, where the string must then be wrapped with
+"".
+.TP
+.BI dedupe_percentage \fR=\fPint
+If set, fio will generate this percentage of identical buffers when writing.
+These buffers will be naturally dedupable. The contents of the buffers depend
+on what other buffer compression settings have been set. It's possible to have
+the individual buffers either fully compressible, or not at all. This option
+only controls the distribution of unique buffers.
 .TP
 .BI nrfiles \fR=\fPint
 Number of files to use for this job.  Default: 1.
@@ -612,6 +642,17 @@ options.
 Using Glusterfs libgfapi async interface to direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
 having to go through FUSE. This ioengine defines engine specific
 options.
+.TP
+.B libhdfs
+Read and write through Hadoop (HDFS).  The \fBfilename\fR option is used to
+specify host,port of the hdfs name-node to connect. This engine interprets
+offsets a little differently. In HDFS, files once created cannot be modified.
+So random writes are not possible. To imitate this, libhdfs engine expects
+bunch of small files to be created over HDFS, and engine will randomly pick a
+file out of those files based on the offset generated by fio backend. (see the
+example job file to create such files, use rw=write option). Please note, you
+might want to set necessary environment variables to work with hdfs/libhdfs
+properly.
 .RE
 .P
 .RE
@@ -668,7 +709,9 @@ Fio will normally perform IOs until it has exhausted the size of the region
 set by \fBsize\fR, or if it exhaust the allocated time (or hits an error
 condition). With this setting, the range/size can be set independently of
 the number of IOs to perform. When fio reaches this number, it will exit
-normally and report status.
+normally and report status. Note that this does not extend the amount
+of IO that will be done, it will only stop fio if this condition is met
+before other end-of-job criteria.
 .TP
 .BI fsync \fR=\fPint
 How many I/Os to perform before issuing an \fBfsync\fR\|(2) of dirty data.  If